20 Must See Movies To Share With Your Kids

When it comes to children there are only two kinds of movies: The kind you show them to shut them up and the kind you share with them in the hopes they'll remember them for the rest of their lives. By the time my firstborn is six or seven, he or she will have seen more than his or her fair share of Nutty Professors or Shrek Forever Afters, and that's fine. But once your kids are old enough to remember, it becomes important to make sure you're also showing them something better.

Yet you can't wait around until they're old enough to really take in and appreciate movies like Rear Window or Lord of the Rings, let alone get literate enough to handle subtitles. By then it'll be too late. Beverly Hills Chihuahua VII will already own their brains. Every once in awhile fathers and mothers have the opportunity to take their pre-teens to see something like Toy Story 3, and while those kids will likely forget lesser movies like Rio, that kind of Pixar experience is one they may remember for the rest of their lives.

So it's up to you and it's up to me as a parent to make sure our kids get a steady diet of honest to god movie magic, mixed in with the forgettable babysitter DVDs we're almost certain to pop in whenever mom needs a breather. I envision this perfect place where we sit on the couch together, crank up the surround sound, and I take my kid to all the places I went when I was his or her age, and all the places I went as an adult and loved.

After man-crying my way through Toy Story 3, the Toy Story trilogy will be top of my list when it comes to sitting down with my kids. But there's a whole host of other great, magical, family movies you should be ready to show your rugrats. These are the movies I'm most looking forward to sharing with my kids. Some might be over their heads, but that's alright, I want to challenge them. Others will be right at their level, and probably do a better job of keeping their attention. Most will fire their imagination, some will teach important lessons. Others will be in black and white, might as well get them used to it. They'll fidget through some and get swept up in others. But most of all, the movies we'll watch will be good. We'll start slow and they'll be brilliant.

Maybe later, as the kids get older, we'll work up to The Nightmare Before Christmas and then Jurassic Park and E.T., but first we'll sit on the couch together, down a bottle of Ritalin (kidding!) and watch these. They're not just the best kids movies, they're the best movies for your kids...